What did it matter that as soon as he got into the low, dark room Uncle Grünebaum dropped onto the nearest chair, laid his arms on the table and his head on his arms? What did Mother Christine and Auntie Schlotterbeck care about Uncle Grünebaum in this hour? They left him entirely to himself and to his seven glasses of bitters! The two women were almost as bewildered and confused as the master; they sobbed and smiled at the same time, as he had sobbed and smiled and Hans was not behind them in emotion and jubilance. The day was won by the two boys from Kröppel Street; Moses Freudenstein of course had passed first among all the candidates; but Hans Unwirrsch had achieved the second place. Everything in the room looked different from usual; a magic light had spread over everything. It was no wonder that the glass globe shone; it was too intimate with the sun not to sparkle on such a day as if it were a little sun itself. Anyone who looked at it carefully saw that more was reflected in it than he would have suspected: laughing and weeping faces, bits of the walls, a part of Kröppel Street with a piece of blue sky, the royal Westphalian body-servant and the junk-dealer Samuel Freudenstein who pulled the said servant from his hook with strange haste and shut the shutters and door of his house. Auntie Schlotterbeck saw this occurrence, which was reflected in the hanging globe, through the window and was just about to give vent to her wonder at it when Uncle Grünebaum raised his tired head from the table and began to survey his surroundings with more than astonished glances. He rubbed his eyes, ran his fingers through his hair and took his place once more in the family circle with the remark that any excess of joy and jubilance was very dangerous and might bring on attacks of something like apoplexy, as his "own bodily example" had just shown. With his senses he had regained in rich measure the gift of dulcet speech and as usual immediately made liberal use of it.